


You Gotta Be

by posingasme



Category: Supernatural, Wayward Sisters (TV)
Genre: Episode: s13e10 Wayward Sisters, Gen, Inspired by Music, No Slash, Parallels, Shooting Guns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-06 16:52:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15890130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/posingasme/pseuds/posingasme
Summary: Patience is bright, strong, powerful and terrified. When she chose her own wayward path, her father told her that if she left, she couldn’t come back. She is plagued by psychic visions she doesn’t understand and cannot control. This all sounds a little too familiar to an older hunter she calls on for support.(Incredible art by winchesterchola)(Beautiful song by Des'ree)





	1. The Path with the Monsters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [winchesterchola](https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchesterchola/gifts).



Her nerves were already raw. She was this close to turning back around and finding a library, where she could apply to every university no one had ever heard of in the whole country. She didn’t want to be hunting anything. And she certainly didn’t want to be found by anything that needed to be hunted. A little college, in a little college town, in a place no one would come looking for her, like Earlham. She had stayed up most of last night researching, and landed on Earlham College, in Richmond, Indiana. They had a good pre-med program. And best of all? She had never heard of it. Beautifully anonymous and safe, and she could become a doctor, and that would be the saving people part of her life. 

Instead, here she was, watching a black classic car pull off the dirt highway and park. She was trembling a little inside when the giant man climbed out of the driver’s seat and turned to smile at her.

The smile was warm and the handsome face was like sunshine when it was lit up like that. She made herself take a deep breath. “Sam,” she said in a stronger voice than she probably needed. 

“Hey, Patience. You okay?” Sam stepped lightly, considering his bulk. Patience had noticed that about him right away. His brother too. They were both large men, but they were agile, athletic, graceful. 

She supposed they had to be in order to have survived as long as they had. Claire said they were practically geriatric in the hunting community, especially for guys who had been raised in the life. Jody had taken some offense to that, but Claire had just snickered.

“Patience?”

It was easier to smile when thinking of Claire getting under Jody’s skin. It was practically an art form. “Yeah.” Her voice softened. “I’m okay. Thank you for coming out here.”

The man snorted. “Patience, I made you drive two hours to meet me.”

“You didn’t have to meet me at all,” she insisted. “So thank you.”

 

He reached out to hug her quickly, and her trembling eased in his strong arms. It occurred to her that perhaps this was what having a big brother was like. Claire talked about these men like family, and one instant in Sam’s embrace gave her a glimpse into why. Something about Sam and Dean just felt like family should feel. Like family used to feel with her dad. 

She stepped back and sighed. “Okay. I’m apparently going to keep running into weird, freaky stuff, so teach me how to not die.”

Sam gave her a soft laugh. “Jody said something like that once. This wackadoo stuff just keeps on coming, or something. But she’s really the worst monster magnet not named Winchester I’ve ever met. Except maybe my old friend Bobby.” He moved to the trunk and popped it open to sift through its contents. “He was...something else. Still is, in some worlds.” 

This reminded her of Kaia, and she cringed. “You know, people talk about life after college being the real world. That seems kind of laughable once you’ve met creatures from an actual different world. I killed one, you know. I killed a monster. And a few months ago, that would have been the craziest thing I’d ever said.” 

Sam nodded, though he didn’t look up. She was glad of that. She had never been shy, but she suddenly didn’t want to be watched. “Life after college,” he mused quietly.

Patience shifted her bag on her shoulder. It surprised her that this was the phrase Sam had caught on. It seemed to be the least important thing she had just said. “Yeah. You know. School isn’t real life. It’s just getting you ready for real life. People always say, wait till you get to the real world. Used to drive me crazy. And now, I think...All those people who live in what they think is the real world, just because they’re not in school anymore, when it’s all just a mask over what’s really out there…”

He turned to her then, holding a shotgun like it was a perfectly normal thing to pull out of a trunk. “Patience? What we do? My brother and me, and Jody, Donna, Claire and even Alex...It’s why we do what we do. So other people can live in that safe world, and not have to know what’s out there. So they can go to work and love their families, and not live their lives afraid.”

Patience took a breath, and let her gaze shift away from his. “And so you live your lives afraid instead.”

Sam heaved a sigh, and gestured to the fallen tree nearby. She followed. 

They sat for a full minute before he spoke, and in that time, she took note of how large he was, which only made her feel smaller. Small, helpless, completely out of her league. She wasn’t a complete and possibly psychotic badass like Claire. She wasn’t entirely unshakable, calm under all circumstances like Alex. She was small, and she was afraid. 

“You know,” Sam murmured in a gentle voice, “you never stop being afraid. Even if you stop hunting. You never stop knowing.”

She nodded. “Which is why you’re training me.”

He shrugged. “It’s smart to be able to defend yourself. But you don’t have to go looking for these things. Being a hunter...It sucks.”

She blinked at him in surprise. “Dean, I expected to say something like that. But I thought you were a hundred percent into this weird lifestyle.”

When Sam began to laugh, she couldn’t help smiling too. He had a contagious personality. “Wow. Yeah,” he confirmed. “Yeah, I’m all in. But that’s sort of a recent development, you know?”

“Why?”

“Because I did grow up in the life, like Claire says, but most of the time, I would’ve given anything to just be normal. To just live a normal life in a normal house with a normal family.”

Patience shook her head. “Nobody wants to be normal, Sam. Especially if they can be a superheroes like you and Dean.”

He hummed his derision. “I did. I remember thinking, I just don’t want to be the freak for once. And I kind of just ended up as a freak with everyone else and also a freak in my own family.”

She was staring at him. “That’s crazy.”

“What part?” Sam asked, with a bit of amusement. 

“That you were ever the freak at school. That you wanted to be…”

His smile was kind. “You? Yeah. I wanted to be you. You’re smart, Patience, and you’re a good student, good athlete. I wanted all that. I even went away to college for a while.”

She watched him, feeling a sudden, desperate connection forming. “You did? Where?”

Sam was fiddling with the shotgun. She supposed he was doing something purposeful, but she couldn’t imagine what. But his gaze was on it instead of her. “Where. Because that’s all normal smart kids can think about. Where did you apply? Where did you get in? Where are you going?”

She waited. 

“Uh, Stanford. Got a full ride.”

Patience felt her mouth drop open. “Stanford! You got a full ride to Stanford?”

He laughed, but this time it seemed uncomfortable. “Seems like a lifetime ago. I guess it was. Like five or six lifetimes ago.”

She didn’t understand some of that, but she guessed it had to do with world-jumping. “A full ride to Stanford University,” she repeated. 

“Yeah. I guess that’s...God, that’s over a decade ago now. Guess Claire’s right. I’m getting old.”

Patience nodded, and stared down at her hands. “So your dad must’ve been pretty proud of that.” Tears burned in her eyes, but she held control. She couldn’t control anything that was going on around her, but she could control herself. Except the visions. If only her grandmother were still...Patience caught herself and swallowed down that sentiment. Her grandmother was gone, and there was no point in wishing she weren’t. She wasn’t going to have a mentor through all this. She just needed to figure it all out. 

When she looked up, Sam was smirking. There was a bitterness to his laugh. “You’d think so, huh?” he said finally. “But look. My dad wasn’t proud. Or...or maybe he was a little, but mostly he was scared.”

She lifted her head to stare. “Scared? Your dad was scared of Stanford?”

“Yeah. He was afraid of me being on my own. I think maybe I understand better now that I’ve been helping Jack...Anyway, it doesn’t matter how strong a kid is. His dad is still going to worry about him. Don’t get me wrong. He was a jackass about it. Told me if I walked out that door-“

“I better never come back.”

Silence pulsed between them as they both felt those words deep in their chests. Patience could see Sam’s flinch when she finished his sentence. 

He knew, she realized then. This man knew what it was like to make that decision, to close the door to everything he knew and walk away from it, with no safety net. To walk toward the impossible and away from the only family he had. This man knew what it was like to be utterly alone in a whole new world. He had changed his trajectory after a lifetime of training and planning for something entirely different. He knew what it felt like to hear that there was no turning back. 

Sam cleared his throat. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“It’s what my dad said, when I took off for Jody’s to warn her and Claire. If I left, I better never come back.”

The hunter took a long breath, and sighed it out. “Yeah. It’s a rotten thing to say to a kid who’s just trying to do the right thing. Feeling that door close behind you…”

“It’s horrible,” she murmured. 

“Yeah.” Sam licked his lips. Then he pushed himself to stand and reached down to help her up too. “But look. You did what was right for you. Might change your mind one day. I did. But till then, you gotta see where this path leads, and you gotta be ready for anything that comes along.”

Patience looked up at him with a small smile. “Monsters,” she said dryly. “I chose the path with the monsters. And everybody said I was smart.”

Sam’s laughter was back, and it made her grin. “You’re plenty smart. You just might be a little crazy too.”

“I’m mad, you’re mad. We’re all mad here.”

“Okay, Alice. You’ve ganked your first monster. You’ve shot a gun. Now let me show you how to shoot it right.”

They practiced with the 12-gauge for a while, then with a handgun for nearly an hour, with protection for their ears making talk awkward. Sam communicated quite effectively with gestures and smirks, and she rarely needed to take off her muffs for clarification. They shot a target Sam painted onto their fallen tree until it was unrecognizable. 

Patience was an excellent student. She watched Sam’s movements and mirrored them exactly. By the time Sam gestured for her to take off her ear protection and sit for a break, she was pleased with her progress. 

She was drinking Sam’s water as she listened to him lecture about the specificity of hunting. Certain things required certain special weapons. When in doubt…

“Headshot.”

Sam nodded. “You got it. There’s very little that can survive losing its head. If you’re not sure, make that Plan A.”

“And Plan B?”

He gave her a shrug. “Run like hell is always Plan B.”

Patience joined his laughter now. 

“No,” he continued. “Salt and iron will disrupt ghosts and a lot of other stuff besides. Always good to have some on you. My old mentor, Bobby, used to call him our crazy uncle. He never went out of the house without his iron knife. Had a crucifix on the handle too. All purpose.”

“I had a crazy uncle way back. He used to carry a little bottle of holy water around, and I asked him why, if it had something to do with being Jewish. He just looked at me funny, and said he always added it to a drink when he met somebody new. Then my dad stepped in and told me to stop asking Uncle Rufus so many questions.”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “What? Uncle what?”

“His name was Rufus Turner. Weird guy. I haven’t seen him since I was really little. He was my dad’s uncle. Dad didn’t like him much, but always let him stay in our guest room when he was nearby.” 

“Small, small world,” Sam was muttering. 

“What’s that mean?”

He turned a smile on her. “I knew a Rufus Turner a while back. He was a friend of Bobby’s, in fact. Good hunter. Buckets of crazy. But he saved a lot of people in his time.”

“Really? You think it was the same man?”

“Crazy guy that carried holy water and wouldn’t work on Sabbath? Yeah. I’m pretty sure there’s only one of that guy. I’ll tell you some stories one day.”

“Uncle Rufus was a hunter. Wow.” They were quiet for a moment, then she looked up. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Sam sighed. 

“Killed by a monster?”

He lifted a shoulder, and spoke in a soft voice. “It’s how most of us go eventually. We just hope to help save some folks before that happens.”

“Was it horrible?”

Sam gave her a kind smile. “He was a hero, Patience. And so are you. You’ve already done what all hunters work to do. You’ve saved people. You helped save me, and my brother too. I’m grateful for that. Folks we save...they don’t always have the wherewithal to say thank you. But I’m telling you now. If it weren’t for you and Claire, Jody, Donna, Alex? If it weren’t for Kaia? I don’t know if Dean and I would have made it. And because of you saving us, every person we save for the rest of our lives, that’s because of you.”

She felt tears stinging at her eyes again. She watched Sam, desperate for his words. He knew. This was what she needed, and he knew. 

“Patience, every soul we save from here on out is a little bit because of you. And everyone they help, that is too. You’ve already made a difference. By going to Jody, you made a sacrifice that I know hurt. Patience, I know. Probably better than any hunter I’ve ever met, I know.”

Her tears were spilling over at last, and she didn’t bother to scold herself this time. 

“You chose to do what you could to save someone, instead of staying safe yourself. And my dad was too afraid to be proud of me, and your dad is too afraid to be proud of you, but there’s something to be said for knowing you made the hard choice for the right reason. It’s something you have to be proud of yourself.”

Without a thought, Patience dove into Sam’s arms, and wept onto his broad chest. 

Without any hesitation, he held her. “Patience, no matter what you choose from here on, you’re a hero. You know what you’re made of now. You know you can handle what others can’t. I’m proud to know you. I can’t tell you what to do; I wouldn’t even try. But there are a lot of folks who will never have what you have, that knowledge that you’re strong in the face of evil and you’re firmly on the side of good.”

“I’m scared.”

He squeezed her tighter. “I’m scared. You’re scared. We’re all scared here. But we’re not alone. Okay? There are no closed doors here. No matter what, you or one of the other girls, or Jody or Donna, need us? Dean and I will be there. Our families won’t always understand us or our decisions. But we will always come through when family needs us. And that includes you now. Okay?”

She nodded quickly. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

Sam stepped back to watch her dry her tears. “Patience? I also know a little about what it feels like, having those visions.”

Her dark eyes blinked at him. 

“When I was just a few years older than you are now, I-I started getting these premonitions. They were painful and terrifying, and it seemed like I could never prevent what I saw coming.”

“That’s how it feels! With Kaia! I did what I could, told Jody and Claire what I saw coming, and in the end…in the end, I had interpreted it wrong, and it all happened anyway, and…”

He spoke up quickly. “And that’s not your fault. You did what you could. That’s the important part, kiddo. You do what you can. Sometimes it changes things for the better, and sometimes it doesn’t. But you use it to help when you can, and that’s what makes you a hero.”

The young woman wiped away her tears with trembling fingertips. “Thank you, Sam. Really. There’s no hunter orientation, apparently. No Hogwarts for hunters.”

Sam laughed quietly, and he pushed his hair behind his ear. “Yeah. No. We make all this crap up as we go, and when we don’t die, we figure it’s worth trying again one day.”

“But you had a mentor in your friend, your uncle Bobby. It would help me, I think, if I could...if maybe I could think of you that way? Like he was for you?”

The hunter was smiling. “Like a big brother. I’ll feel old if you say like an uncle.”

Patience smirked. “You are a little old,” she teased shyly. 

“Okay! First rule of mentorship! Don’t call your mentor old!”

She gave him a giggle, but it sounded a lot like relief and gratitude.


	2. All I know is...

Sam watched the car pull out, with Patience behind the wheel. They had gotten a meal at a diner, had talked further, but mainly had enjoyed companionable quiet. There were very few people in the world Sam could simply be still with. Patience was aptly named. She was thoughtful, and unhurried.

It wasn’t a long drive back to the bunker. He hadn’t wanted to go far, not with everything that was going on. For a man who had spent his youth trying to run away from home, it was strange how rooted to his new home he had become.

The young woman was similar to Sam in so many ways. But she had a confidence he had lacked. He saw in Patience the type of person he might have been at her age, had he not second-guessed himself at every turn. But then maybe he had looked confident from the outside too. Patience had contacted him because she hated being afraid. She wanted to have a chance against the nasty things out there in the shadows. She had come to him, ready to learn whatever it took to get ahead of her fear. Sam had been somewhat opposite to this at one time in his life. He knew how to defend himself. John had trained him, Dean had trained him. But he had tried to run away from what he knew. Patience wasn’t running. She was walking into it with grace.

Just as he was parking his childhood home in the garage of his new one, Sam heard an old song come over the radio. He sat back to listen. It wasn’t Dean’s style of music, but Sam’s taste was more eclectic. And this song had accompanied him through his rough high school years.

 _Listen as your day unfolds._  
_Challenge what the future holds._  
_Try to keep your head up to the sky._  
_Lovers, they may cause you tears._  
_Go ahead, release your fears._  
_Stand up and be counted._  
_Don’t be ashamed to cry._

Sam took in a deep breath, and closed his eyes. Des’ree’s rich voice swirled around him, retelling the story of his life.

Challenging his destiny was the tagline of his entire existence. First, it was hunting, and working as hard as he could at every school he attended, because he was getting out one day. It was staying up all night with a flashlight while John drove and Dean snored, to read the book he had stolen from the library, because he guessed it might be what his class was reading in the next town. It was fitting in time for algebra between learning to hack a security camera and researching lore for the hunt of the week. It was learning to kick a soccer ball between training hikes and target practice, just so he could pretend on his college applications that he played a normal sport.

Challenging his destiny was fighting against hunting, until he chose instead to embrace it, and by then it became fighting against the forces of Hell and Heaven. The once future Boy King knew better than anyone on the planet how maddening it can be to challenge what the future holds.

Trying to keep his head up was the constant struggle in a world full of horror. It was easier to drown out the things he had seen with Hunter’s Helper, than to keep grinding. But he didn’t have it in him to stop, not when there was always someone else out there who needed saving.

Had there ever been a lover who hadn’t broken his heart? Even the one-night wonders, as Dean put it, made his heart ache when he thought about the terminal impermanence of his life, the fact that he would never truly have the chance to live that apple pie life. He had been careless and naive with Jess. Conceited and stupid with Ruby. Grief-soaked and desperate with Amelia. And Eileen. God, Eileen. If ever there had been a chance, hadn’t it been that incredible, brilliant, wayward huntress?

And yet he continued to stand up to be counted, on the side of good, in the fight against evil.

Sam had indoctrinated a new hunter today. Jody and Donna, Alex and Claire, they would take it from here. Nobody knew better than the four of them just how scary the world truly was. They had each lost friends and family to the supernatural. They each had a trail of broken relationships, and the scars from broken bones and broken hearts. They had each made the choice to keep fighting, against impossible odds.

Sam patted the wheel of the Impala with fondness, and climbed out at the end of his song.

 _Herald what your mother said._  
_Read the books your father read._  
_Try to solve the puzzles_  
_In your own sweet time..._

Enough reflection for today. He had work to do.

***

Patience lay awake, listening to her music on her phone. It was dark, and she was afraid of what she couldn’t see. The music helped. When one of her dad’s old favorites from before she was born came on, she let tears slip out to trickle down her face onto her pillow.

 _You gotta be…_  
_You gotta be bad, you gotta be bold_  
_You gotta be wiser_  
_You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough,_  
_You gotta be stronger_  
_You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm,_  
_You gotta stay together…_

How many times had she heard this song playing from her father’s office at home? How many times had she wondered whether she was all those things?

She was.

She had chosen the path with the monsters, and it was the right one. Not every hero had to be a badass like Claire or completely unshakeable like Alex, certainly not both, like Jody and Donna. She could be afraid. Kaia had been afraid. Kaia had known better than any of them what horrors were out there, and she had been very afraid. But she had been a hero, and in the end, it was frightened Kaia who saved the day. And Missouri. Missouri did what she did to give Patience the same chance, to be something more than what was normal. 

Sam was afraid too. He was all those things the song encouraged her to be, but he was also afraid. And she had to believe that Sam was not ashamed to cry.

Patience was afraid down to her core. But she was also powerful. Bad and bold could be faked, wisdom could be earned. Hard and tough would come. She could look to Claire to be stronger, to Alex to be cool and calm, to Jody to stay together. And one smile from Donna promised everything would be okay.

_Time asks no questions_   
_It goes on without you_   
_Leaving you behind_   
_if you can’t stand the pace._   
_The world keeps on spinning_   
_Can’t stop it if you try to._   
_Best part is danger staring you_   
_In the face…_

Patience began to smile, and though she refused to be ashamed of them, her tears dried on their own. “Danger staring you in the face…” she muttered softly. “Nobody would choose to be normal, if they could be a superhero instead. If they could save people instead. And a hero can be afraid, as long as she’s willing to stare danger in the face.”

She chose the path with the monsters. She would be all of these things and more.

_You gotta be bold,_   
_You gotta be bad_   
_Gotta be wise_   
_Don’t ever say_   
_Gotta be hard_   
_Not too too hard_   
_All I know is_   
_Love will save the day..._

**Author's Note:**

> (Incredible art by winchesterchola)  
> (Beautiful song by Des'ree)


End file.
